Miriam Axel-Lute
Miriam Axel-Lute is CEO/editor-in-chief of Shelterforce. She lives in Albany, New York, and is a proud small-city aficionado.
Zoning for Housing Justice
Alvivon Hurd remembers when no one with means lived in downtown Los Angeles. Especially not white people. “For 30 years you only saw ...
Listen To Me
When Dolores Shaw first got involved with the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP) eight years ago, she had two children entering school and a...
Housing Set-Asides: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
In August 2002, Kevin Jackson, director of the Chicago Rehab Network, sent a letter out to network members and supporters to introduce a campaign...
Helping the Mayor Get Your Way
“We need more buses!” That’s what organizers with Miami’s congregation-based organizing group PACT (People Acting for Community Together) heard loud and clear as they...
Winning a War, But Losing the Battle
Victory in a tenant organizing campaign is usually defined by improving conditions for the tenants involved – an egregious repair problem is fixed, landlord...
Direct Action for Housing
Direct action protest tactics for affordable housing can support efforts of lobbying groups.
Building Blocks (Block Group Organizing)
Ralph Quinn was ticked off. Things in his Utica, New York neighborhood were getting intolerable. His high school step-daughter was propositioned seven times by...
Politics and Markets
On May 29, The Washington Post reported that in England, even the most conservative major party supports national healthcare, subsidized higher education and income...
Don’t Start Small
It’s often said that organizers should begin with easily attainable goals to bolster their group’s confidence. But Caroline Murray, executive director of the Anti-Displacement...
Tales of Three Cities
Even after neighboring Hoboken turned from working-class enclave to exclusive high-cost outpost, some think that will never happen to Newark...
Not Afraid To Speak Up
As the World Trade Organization (WTO) prepared for its meetings in Seattle in November 1999, homeless advocates were worried that street sweeps to clean...
Everything Old is New Again
It’s déjà vu at every turn these days. Colin Powell is visiting the Middle East. Airline workers are not allowed to strike. The economy...
We Can’t Be Pegged
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a funder of community organizing, defies right and left stereotypes to focus on justice.
Faith-Based Management
Faith-Based Management: Leading Organizations that are Based on More than Just Mission. By Peter C. Brinckerhoff. John Wiley & Sons Inc. 1999, 250pp.
Peter Brinckerhoff,...
Back to the Streets
April 15th was a busy day in Washington, DC this year. A week of rallies, protests, teach-ins, nonviolence trainings, and preemptive police action was...
Creating Your Employee Handbook
Creating Your Employee Handbook, by Leyna Bernstein and the Management Center, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000. 256 pp. Need an employee manual, but don't know...
On Leadership
If you stop learning today, you stop leading tomorrow. - Dr. Howard Hendricks, theologian. What makes a leader? We all have an image...
Knowledge is (Still) Power
It's getting harder and harder to call our time a period of record prosperity when the income disparity is as great as it is...
New Codes for Old Buildings
Rehabilitating old buildings in New Jersey used to be uncertain business. Depending on how much you spent compared to the building's value, you had...
Town & Gown: Making Research Serve Communities’ Needs
Academics often get a bad reputation for studying poor communities without involving them in study design. But some researchers are doing it differently.